Markups and annotations

A markup is something drawn on top of a document: a cloud round a clash, a dimension across an opening, a note explaining what is wrong. Markups sit in a layer above the file, so the document itself is never changed. The PDF you marked up is the same PDF everybody else opens.

The tools

The set is what you would expect from a red pen and a scale rule, and then some.

Highlight for text on a specification. Text and callout for a note, the callout adding a leader line from the note to the point on the drawing it is about. Note for a comment pinned to a spot.

Cloud for the revision cloud that construction runs on. Rectangle, circle, line, arrow, polygon and polyline for shapes. Freehand and ink for drawing directly.

Measurement for a dimension read off the drawing, which needs the drawing calibrated to a known length first. Count for tallying items across a sheet. Stamp and pin for marking a location or applying a standard mark.

Markups can be selected, moved, reshaped by dragging their points, and undone.

Calibrating before measuring

A measurement is only as good as the scale it was taken at, so calibrate the sheet first by drawing along something whose real length you know and telling Teralo what that length is. Everything measured afterwards on that sheet is then in real units.

Do it on each sheet rather than once per document. Sheets in the same set are not always at the same scale, and a plan and a detail on the same page certainly are not.

A measurement taken off a drawing is a good indication and not a substitute for the dimensions written on it. Where a drawing states a dimension, the stated one governs.

Markups belong to a revision

A markup is attached to the revision it was drawn on.

That is deliberate rather than a limitation. A comment about a clash on revision B is a comment about revision B, and carrying it silently onto revision C would attach it to a drawing where the clash may already have been resolved, which is worse than losing it. When a document is revised, its markups stay with the older revision as part of the record. See Versions and revisions.

Who can see a markup

Markups are visible to the people on the project who can see the document, which makes them a way of communicating rather than a private scratchpad. Your own are gathered together so you can find what you have marked up without remembering which drawing it was on.

If a markup carries something that needs somebody to act, it is worth also being something Teralo tracks: an observation for site work, a submittal comment for a review, a mail for a question. A drawing covered in clouds is a record of a conversation; it is not a list anybody is working from.

Getting markups out

A marked-up document can be exported with the markups burned into the file, which is what you want when the markup is the deliverable: a commented drawing going back to a designer, a marked-up sheet attached to a claim.

The exported file is a new file rather than a change to the original. The original keeps its own markup layer, editable, exactly as it was.

Where else markups appear

The same markup layer is in every viewer, so a submittal being reviewed, a drawing inside a procurement package and a sheet opened from an inspection all mark up the same way. A markup made during a review is attached to the step it was made on, which keeps the comment and the decision together. See Approving and rejecting.